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Youthful Hearts, Impetuous Minds

Hong Kong
Hong Kong Cultural Center, Tsim Sha Tsui
08/13/2009 -  
Samuel Barber: Adagio for String Orchestra, Op. 11
Maurice Ravel: Boléro - Piano Concerto in G
Igor Stravinsky: The Firebird Suite (1919 version)

Jean Louis Steuerman (piano)
Asian Youth Orchestra, Richard Pontzious (Conductor/ Artistic Director)


Richard Pontzious


Every summer, when most professional orchestras are on their seasonal break, the Asian Youth Orchestra brings unexpected excitement and entertainment to Asian metropolitans. Hong Kong audience must be very familiar with this orchestra, in which many former members are the pillars of the Hong Kong Philharmonic and the Sinfonietta now. On Thursday and Friday evenings, 104 youngsters from different Asian countries, including 15 from Hong Kong, displayed their enthusiasm in the full-house Cultural Center.


Thursday evening’s concert opened with Barber’s famous Adagio for String Orchestra. This intimate and tranquil miniature served as a perfect purification for audience’s ears and set vivid contrast to the following orchestral showpieces. AYO’s lukewarm and tepid string tone (especially from the violins) was tailor-made for the music’s heavenly sonority. The dragging pace and rhythmic intricacies were all overcome by the young players’ utmost unity and discipline, a missing quality of most youth orchestras.


Disappointingly, the following Boléro fell far short from expectation. Although the strings were able to retain their lofty standard, before their arco entry in the middle of the piece, the winds already flubbed the music. The disastrous trombones, the guiltiest part of the whole evening, almost stunned conductor Pontzious by its three fatal indiscretions when it was playing the solo melody. The brass chords also sounded burbled near the end of the piece.


The woodwind and brass players kept struggling with their balance in Ravel’s Piano Concerto. The opening melody by the flute and some crucial wind solos elsewhere were buried among Ravel’s hectic accompanying figures, making the outer movements rather lackluster. This kind of suppressed expressivity was most irritating in the slow movement – even the most enchanting reprise melody by the English horn was rendered with plain-spoken phrasings. Pianist Steuerman responded with an analytical and intellectual approach. The pace of the left-hand’s waltz-like accompaniment was metronomically maintained from the first bar until the end of the movement. This steadiness gave extra elegance and innocence to this lyrical section, but for ears attuned to a more romanticized and expressive interpretation, Steuerman’s reading was a monochrome. The sparkles in the third movement were also inhibited by understated pace and articulation both from the soloist and the orchestra. If Yundi Li’s reading last year with the HKPO (read here) was too scurrying and bustling, tonight’s performance went another extreme.


Obviously, Stravinsky’s The Firebird was a more promising rendition. The intimate string tone was tellingly exemplified in the tender Khorovod and lullaby. There were also more glitters and shimmers from the youthful hearts, but the jarring brass during tutti passages was still a distressing ingredient. The overly aggressive Infernal Dance somehow overshadowed the grandeur in the finale, demolishing the overall structure of the artwork. The orchestra was perhaps too concentrated in bringing out the music’s air-shattering climax at the end, sacrificing the tension and cohesion in this long building process.


Tomorrow evening’s more Austro-German program will put the audience on a different proclivity. A more traditional and classical piano concerto may better fit Mr. Steuerman’s musicality. Keep tuned to ConcertoNet.com for the review.



Danny Kim-Nam Hui

 

 

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